Genre Conventions

Pop:

Pop music videos are often more extravagant than most indie or rock videos as due to the high popularity of the style have much higher funded budgets. The idea of a pop music video is to advertise the artist and the song and usually have a very upbeat and positive tone to them. Pop music videos are often performance oriented but do usually contain some kind of narrative which classifies them as hybrid music videos. Successful music videos tend to feature choreography (Single Ladies – Beyoncé) that often perpetuates into the rest of pop culture and may turn into an internet meme (Hotline Bling – Drake).  As Star Images are much more prevalent in pop music the way the artist is portrayed is very important in the filming of the video. This high budget type of production allows for the use of top of the range filming equipment and ground breaking special effect techniques to create a very high quality piece of media.

Indie:

Indie music videos don’t usually focus on the idea of Star Image as much as pop videos tend to, indie music isn’t gimmicky and puts more emphasise on the meaning of the lyrics and the sound of the music and because of this are usually narrative based. Concepts about the world and society are included in indie music videos and they are often hybrids of narrative and performance though indie band performances are usually filmed on a smaller scale (e.g. A garage vibe) than pop videos. Though indie music is increasing in popularity the videos are usually still small budget so feature less special effects and high budget backdrops.

Rock:

Rock videos, like pop, generally tend to focus on the band or artist and favour mostly performance based footage over narrative with the song lyrics synced to the artists mouthing. Rock videos don’t just focus on the lead vocalist as a lot of pop videos do though and they feature the rest of the band often playing their instruments (e.g. Pretender – Foo Fighters and Heart of Fire – Black Veil Brides). If a story-line is introduced into a rock music video they are usually hybrid videos featuring aspects of both performance and narrative based videos.

Hip Hop/R ‘n’ B:

Hip Hop and R ‘n’ B are new and emerging genres in popular culture and have only really began to gain interest in popular culture since the 90’s. This newfound popularity has caused a lot of hip hop/R ‘n’ B music videos to take on a lot of the characteristics of pop music videos due to the large budget and type of audience they are trying to reach. This genre of music often plays about with the idea of creating a star image (Kanye’s persona) focusing more on wealth and prosperity, reflected in the mise en scene and costumes used in the video, than likability as some pop artists do. The large budgets used in such music videos like (insert music video) helps to create that idea that the artist lead a lavish lifestyle and have intimidating personas.